The Second Carter Review

The second Carter review, led by Lord Patrick Carter, was published on the 24th May 2018 and outlines how £1bn of efficiency and productivity savings per year can be achieved by 2021. Amongst the 80 page report, there are two topics that stand out for Hospital Pharmacies.

Mental Health

Using pharmacists in much more ‘innovative’ ways to help tackle elements of Mental Health is a key focus of the second review. The review asks that Mental Health and Community trusts deploy pharmacists to combat issues such as the use of antipsychotics and polypharmacy.

Sandra Gidley, chair of the English Pharmacy Board (EPB) at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), said she was ‘delighted that Lord Carter had recognised the roles that pharmacists can play in improving care for those with mental health problems’.

However, she then went on to say that it was unclear what ‘teeth’ the report would actually have. She commented, ‘The EPB is shortly to launch its campaign on how pharmacists can improve the care of patients with mental health issues and some of our proposals will fit nicely into this agenda. It would be helpful if Lord Carter engaged directly with the professional body because the health sector needs to be much more joined up about the care it provides for the most vulnerable in our society.’

Paperwork

A practical solution that came from the second phase review was the idea that paperwork should be reduced within hospital pharmacies to allow pharmacists to do more clinical work. During a presentation to the Clinical Pharmacy Congress in April 2018, Ann Jacklin (Medicines & Pharmacy Professional Advisor, NHS Improvement) spoke about recommendations that the Carter Review could “retrofit” to all NHS trusts. She said, ‘We are going to set up a ‘do once’ national system. We are going to take all that time it takes you that is not clinical, and we are going to stop it. And then we are going to retrofit it to the acutes.’